The Applegate Trail

The Applegate Trail. Southern Route to Oregon. , In 1846, Jesse Applegate and fourteen others from near Dallas, Oregon, established a trail south from the Willamette Valley and east to Fort Hall. This route offered emigrants an alternative to the perilous “last leg” of the Oregon Trail down the treacherous Columbia River. The trail also offered a potential escape route, free from Hudson’s Bay Company control, should Britain and the United States begin warring over control of Oregon., The first emigrants to trek the new “South Road” left with the trailblazers from Fort Hall in early August 1846. With Levi Scott acting as guide, while Jesse Applegate traveled ahead to mark the route, the hardy emigrants blazed a wagon trail through nearly 500 miles of wilderness arriving in the upper Willamette Valley in November. Emigrant travel continued along the Applegate Trail in later years and contributed greatly to the settlement of southern Oregon and the Willamette Valley., Nature Provides a Bridge , “The river was here about eighty feet wide and very deep, but it was spanned by two natural bridges of conglomerate sandstone from 10 to fifteen feet in width, parallel to each other and not more that two rods (33 feet) apart. The water flowed over both of them. There are probably hollows under boy arches, through with the river flows. Emigrants cross here with their loaded wagons. There is no ford for a considerable distance above and none below.” , Lt. Henry L. Abbot, August 13, 1855.